Views on the News

Views on the News*

June 27, 2015

Hillary Clinton’s checkered career has served up any number of examples of just
how unfit to be President she is, none so clearly captures the real Hillary’s essence
as Benghazi.Hillary is incredibly incompetent and fundamentally
dishonest.Incompetent
because she not only needlessly placed Americans in harm’s way, but worse
yet, she failed to come to their aid when requested.Dishonest because she lied about the
real nature of the Benghazi catastrophe long after she knew that the slaughter
was not due to a casual protest run amok because of any video taking Islam to
task. In the history of numerous Washington
scandals, Benghazi is right at the top because according to one of the
left’s favorite critical mantras, Hillary lied and Americans died.In
Benghazi, Americans who were placed in a very dangerous position, the
administration has yet to reveal -- informed their superiors of their
precarious situation and requested help of said superiors to deal with the
danger at hand. Unfortunately, their request went unheeded,
and, as a consequence, they were slaughtered.Watergate pales into insignificance when
contrasted with Benghazigate; Watergate was a third-rate burglary, while
Benghazigate was a first-rate massacre.Thanks to
Hillary’s fundamental dishonesty, we are still trying to find out what
happened that evening. When queried on the
possible cause, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, her response was
an audacious “what difference at this point does it make?” It makes all the difference to the family
and friends of the deceased at Benghazi; and what’s important is
that it should not happen again, how do we do
that if we don’t know why it happened the first time.So, for an extended period, Hillary adhered to the standard Clintonian
response: denial (lie), stonewall, slow walk, etc.When
it became clear that Benghazi was a planned terrorist attack, and that Hillary
and the administration could no longer lie about some irrelevant video, Hillary
stepped up and claimed “responsibility,”
Usually, when one claims responsibility for a
failure of management, one is accountable for such a failure, i.e. they are
punished for the failure, but not so with the new Clinton form of
responsibility; it’s just I’m sorry, and we move on, no one, not
even an underling, falls on a sword.The full story on Benghazi has yet to be
told, and, if Hillary has anything to say about it, it never will.Benghazi is only the tip of the iceberg
when it comes to Hillary’s qualification for any position of rank. She is fundamentally dishonest, completely
incompetent, lacking in any leadership skills, unpleasant, unlikable, and yet this harridan may be our next President.

Seven years of purposeful race-baiting, deliberate legal
biasagainst white people, and
executive decisions that engage in the soft bigotry of low expectations of
black people create the very brew that
would lead to the horrific events in South Carolina--an occurrence that feeds
right into the self-fulfilling prophecies of Obama.As Allen West has asserted, white
America needs to understand that Obama "abjectly
despises" whites. EconomistBen Steinhas called "President Barack Obama the most racist president in U.S.
history." The Obamas cling to their leftist ideology with
a fierceness that is frightening.The
truth is that the vast majority of white Americans arenot racist.With the help of
a complicit media corps, the narrative continues that American white people are
intrinsically racist.Obama
maintainsthat "racism is inAmerica's
DNA." Covert racism
is the culturebeing cultivatedby Barack Obama, Eric Holder, "hoax-perpetrating, riot-inciting" Al Sharpton
and the mainstream media. It
speaks volumes about Obama that a liar like Sharpton is hiskey point manconcerning race relations.Credible datadoes not matter with this President. In
the case of assaults, the average black offender is 5 times more likely to
choose a white victim, than a white is likely to choose a black victim. In the case of robbery, the average black
offender is 25.4 times more likely to choose a white victim, than a white is
likely to choose a black victim.Conveniently ignored by this President are theblack flash mobsthat continue to terrorize white and
Asian people. Nor is there a word about the out-of-control
black-on-black murders in predominantly black urban areas. Obama bulliesthe country every chance he can.
Hisdouble standardsand politicizing areshameful to behold. It is not America that caused the deaths of these people; it
is the constant race baiting andshameful
exploitationby this President
that pushed a very sick, racist, and unstable individual over the
edge. Teaching inferiority is
just as bad as teaching superiority.Either allows one to view someone else as less than human and
undeserving of being treated with human dignity.When the
executive branch of the government and thefourth
estatecontinue this racist rant,
reasonable and law-abiding Americans need to comprehend as well as expose
theulterior motives behind thoseclaiming this racist slander.

The Congressional Budget Office released its annual
"Long-Term Budget Outlook," crunching the numbers to figure out
what current government spending will cost us 25 years down the road, and its findings
are terrifying.The CBO estimates that the federal government will continue
to spend significantly more money than it brings in through taxes —
hundreds of billions every year, to be precise.As a result, America's national
debt, already at more than $18 trillion, is going to grow faster and faster.Over the next 10
years, the CBO projects that Washington's wasteful spending will add an
additional $7.4 trillion to the debt.By 2040, America's national debt could rise to well over $54
trillion, more than triple what it is today.This means slower economic growth,
higher taxes, lower incomes and a government that can't afford to fulfill its
most basic responsibilities.Economic growth slows because individuals and businesses
don't invest when government policies are obviously taking us toward a fiscal
disaster.Higher taxes
because the federal government will need additional revenues to pay for the
debt, even though this will further hurt the economy.Lower incomes because higher debt is
risky and leads to higher interest rates, which could lead to out-of-control
costs for hard-working Americans.And a government that's spending so much money on
entitlements and interest that it struggles to pay for anything else, including
infrastructure and national defense.Ultimately, Washington's spending
addiction will leave us less safe, stable and secure. The biggest obstacle,
unfortunately, is politicians who think they aren't spending enough.Put another way: Reid and his allies in
Congress are willing to shut down the government in order to dig America's
fiscal hole even faster. Washington is digging a hole that gets deeper every year, leaving the rest of the country with no way to climb out.

Republican presidential candidates from Jeb Bush to Rand Paul to Marco Rubio want to increase
growth to 4% from the meager 2% under Obama, but the left is protesting
that 4% is pie in the sky. The economy's doing as well as it can, the skeptics on the
left say, but this is just a Keynesian cover-up for the policy mistakes made
under this administration.The
policies were launched to great fanfare and promised summers of recovery,
rising middle-class wages, millions more jobs than we've gotten and prosperity
for poor and middle class alike.Now that none of that has happened, the people who gave us
Obamanomics seem to be saying: This is the best result our policies, or any
policies, could deliver.Former
Obama economic advisor Larry Summers calls the current slow-growth rut "secular stagnation," but stagnation is always
what we get from liberal income-redistribution policies focused on "fair outcomes" rather than wealth creation.History
proves the economy can grow much faster. Following the Kennedy tax cuts, the
economy averaged 5.2% yearly growth between 1963 and 1969. After the Reagan tax rates fully went
into effect, the economy grew at 4.5% annually between 1982 and 1989.Between 1994 and 1999, the Bill
Clinton/Newt Gingrich economy increased 4.3% annually, after welfare reform,
NAFTA trade and cap-gains tax relief.We are told now that 4% isn't feasible because
growth is too slow in "labor supply, capital investment and
productivity."Except
low labor supply growth, capital investment and productivity are the result of
the policy disasters of the past seven years: from bank bailouts, to ObamaCare,
to $7 trillion in new debt, to lose money, to higher taxes on investment. Repeal these
mistakes and the economy will grow faster.One policy alone, allowing the export of American natural gas and
oil, could raise about $150 billion more output each year, which is close to a
one percentage-point boost in GDP. Our welfare policies discourage work and encourage
dependency.The right kinds of incentive-based welfare reforms that
require work and try to discourage out-of-wedlock births could add millions of
newcomers to the labor force and help reverse that problem.Then there are the EPA
regulations on our energy industry and especially domestic coal production. In other industries, businesses are
sitting on the sidelines with $1 billion to $2 trillion of capital that could
be re-injected into the economy if only we had the right tax, regulatory and
monetary reforms.There are no limits to growth, because there are no limits to
American ingenuity, creativity and entrepreneurial risk taking to discover the next big thing.

This country wouldn’t be nearly as advanced as it
has become without our open door policy to all those who desire to live in
the land. However immigration in this new millennium is a far cry from
the immigration of old.Immigrants once came here with respect and love for this country.They learned the English language, they assimilated and embraced American culture and
identity.They fought in our wars
under our flags, sometimes against their very own countrymen they left
behind!My German immigrant father
raised me as a patriot and encouraged me to join the Marine Corps and serve the
country that brought opportunities he would not have gotten at home.Now we have
immigrants who refuse to learn English, aren’t even required to (and even
broaching the subject is deemed intolerant or racist).We have micro-cultures on top of
micro-cultures, many of those who actually loathe this country.We have schools banning American flag
t-shirts so as not to offend our Latin American immigrants.People have the
nerve to come to this country and make demands such as banning the Pledge of
Allegiance, banning the National Anthem prior to sporting events, and
intolerant atheists or non-Christians who cannot seem to discern the difference
between facing a harmless tradition or an existential crisis when told
“Merry Christmas” by a clerk at a retail store.When I am in a foreign land,
I’ve always tried to wholeheartedly embrace the culture and respect their
traditions.It’s just the
right thing to do when you seek opportunity in a foreign country.When western females visit the Middle
East, they wear the traditional headscarf.If current day immigrants cannot come here
with enough respect to embrace our culture, our language, our traditions, and
our flag, just as is expected in 90% of
countries around the world, then they need to stay home in the lands of
missed opportunity.

Fear mongering is quite lucrative in what seems to be a booming "climate change
industrial complex," where certain people benefit monetarily or
politically in their promotion of global catastrophic risk due to catastrophic
global warming.Al Gore got filthy rich railing over imminent destruction due
to rising sea levels, and now Pope Francis seems to think marketing it as a
moral issue may be a tool to transfer wealth along with the Obama
administration.Alarmists
watch a glacier calve into the sea in Greenland, and have a meltdown over a
meltdown that has happened before and will most likely happen again. Whatever
happened to common sense?Consider
Greenland: Historical knowledge would help us understand that the ice field
known as Greenland was once warmer than it is today. So warm in fact,
back in AD 1000, it is said the Vikings took advantage of ice-free waters
during the Medieval Warm Period to settle and farm there.A few years back, archaeologists
uncovered rubble to find the Vikings even grew barley and corn. During that same warm period, it is well
documented that Europeans did not drown from sea rise, but instead enjoyed
long, hot summers, thanks to that scary greenhouse gas plants love, resulting
in sumptuous crops and overwhelmingly abundant harvests. During the Little
Ice Age that followed, from AD 1300 to AD 1850, mountain glaciers expanded and
temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere dropped by 1.1 degrees.The deep cold triggered extreme weather
elsewhere on the planet (cause and effect), prompting crop failure, widespread
famine and death.Earth scientists
say the Little Ice Age was caused by volcanic eruptions, increased El Nino
episodes and the reduction of solar sunspots. The New York Times accidentally stumbled
on the truth acknowledging, "No human
intervention can avert volcanic eruptions, halt an El Nino episode or delay the
onset of drought."God's
nature also seems to be the culprit in Greenland, according to new research
indicating that melting of selective Greenland Glaciers is related to
geologically-induced heat flow, and not manmade atmospheric global
warming." Sometimes, it just boils down to common sense!

Looking at President Obama’s foreign policy
toward the Muslim world, especially Iran, makes me
feel like America has followed Alice into Wonderland.Nothing makes
sense anymore, as the surreal has displaced the logical. Given Obama’s progressive ideology,
it’s exactly what we should have expected.The first duty of the President has to
be ensuring that the nation does not become vulnerable to the attacks of its
enemies, but Obama fails to understand who our enemies are.Progressivism,
unfortunately, is not very good at recognizing reality, because progressivism
focuses on vision and aspiration. Conservatism begins with the facts on the ground and
seeks improvement through gradual reform.Progressivism begins with a utopian
vision and tries to conform reality to it.Progressivism also errs fundamentally
about the reality of human nature.Conservatives
understand that man is a fallen creature, morally imperfect and inherently
capable of evil in motives and actions.Progressivism believes that man is
innately good, and in terms of foreign policy, that means we must trust that
men’s motives are good, and we can work out our differences by talking
with each other. The Conservative problem comes when reality refuses to
conform to the utopian vision.One inescapable fact of foreign affairs
is that it takes two to make peace, but only one to make war.Barack
Obama’s dream that never was is to see America reconciled to the Muslim
world.He has been obsessed
with Islam right from the beginning of his administration. To realize his
dream, he insists on treating implacable enemies like Iran as if they were already
friends.We’ve
witnessed incomprehensible tactical policy blunders like releasing diehard
jihadists from Guantanamo and watching them return to the battlefield, and the
infamous exchange of five al-Qaeda generals for an American deserter. We’ve witnessed colossal
strategic blunders, like supporting our sworn enemies, the Muslim Brotherhood,
in Egypt and elsewhere, and the inexplicable failure to support the
pro-Western, pro-democracy revolution against the Iranian mullahs in 2009. We’ve even
witnessed the outright denial of reality, such as Obama’s refusal to
acknowledge that the Fort Hood massacre was the work of a Muslim terrorist.Officially it is considered “workplace violence,” even though Major Nidal
Hassan was shouting “Allahu Akbar”
as he gunned down his fellow soldiers. Obama
doesn’t seem to understand that the jihadists are not just like us.They have completely different
values and ethics, and a worldview radically opposed to both Western secularism
and Christianity. They don’t want peace with us;
we are the Great Satan, and they want to destroy us.As the Obama administration winds
down, I expect the situation only to get worse. The increasing
desperation of the administration to realize the dream of fraternity with
the Muslim world by 2016 will lead to ever more ignominious acts of national
self-abasement that may soon verge on outright insanity.

* There is so much
published each week that unless you search for it, you will miss important
breaking news.I try to package the
best of this information into my “Views on the News” each Saturday
morning.Updates have been made
this week to the following sections: